Sols 3238-3239: SAM, What Do You Think?

Curiosity is working her way through a busy drill campaign at the Maria Gordon location and keeping her eyes on the beautiful cliffs nearby. Unfortunately the weekend plan didn’t uplink to the rover due to a DSN issue, so that means that today’s two-sol plan was devoted to recovering those activities. CheMin got to analyze the drill sample last week, so now it’s SAM’s turn. The main activities in today’s plan are the drop-off to SAM and Evolved Gas Analysis. CheMin will also dump the sample to clear out the cell for future use. The science team planned a lot of targeted remote sensing observations, including a ChemCam observation down the drill hole, multiple Mastcam mosaics to investigate nearby stratigraphy and nodule-rich areas, another ChemCam observation of a delicious target named “Chocolate Bloc” and a lot of environmental monitoring activities to monitor dust and clouds and search for dust devils. I was on shift as Long Term Planner today, so I was busy revising our sol path to respond to changes and think about multiple options for the rest of this week depending on the results of the SAM experiment. Can’t wait to find out what SAM thinks of the Maria Gordon sample!

Written by Lauren Edgar, Planetary Geologist at USGS Astrogeology Science Center